Floyd I. John

He was born Aug. 20, 1930, in Morgantown, West Virginia, to Idwal and Margaret (Kinney). The family moved to Gary, Indiana, where Floyd grew up. He started a life-long interest in the Boy Scouts, becoming an Eagle Scout and member of the Order of the Arrow. He graduated from Horace Mann High School and then attended Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he met Martha Tyler of Vermontville. They were married in August 1952.

Floyd and Martha began working together as they attended graduate schools and raised a family.

Floyd received a Master’s degree from Boston University in 1953. Their first son, Floyd Albert, was born in November, 1953. Floyd was drafted in the Army in 1954 and a second son, Bruce, was born in 1955. In 1956 they went to Purdue University where Floyd completed a doctorate and taught at Purdue. A third son, David, was born there in 1961.

Floyd was a senior statistician at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, for two years and then went to Stanford Research Institute when Martha was working on her doctorate. The family returned to the East Coast, where Floyd was a principal scientist at Raytheon Company and Martha taught at Boston University.

Floyd traveled frequently to Raytheon sites in Europe and the family lived in Europe one academic year and traveled extensively. They saw the Berlin Wall, the Passion Play at Oberamagau, and visited a dozen countries. On a two-week holiday they went to the Holy Land, Egypt, Lebanon, Cyprus and Greece.

In 1970, Floyd became a professor of mathematics at Eastern Nazarene College. He taught there until 1974, when he became manager of the Washington office for a contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was there until 1977, when he received a Fulbright Professorship at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. He and Martha and their youngest son, David, toured game parks in Tanzania. On returning to the U.S. Floyd became professor of mathematics and computer science at Mid America Nazarene College (MANC) in Olathe, Kansas.

In 1983, he received a second Fulbright Professorship at the University of Swaziland. He returned to MANC and supervised the new computer center. Then he was offered a position at the National Security Agency. He was there until receiving a promotion to go to the Operational Test and Evaluation Command in Alexandria, Virginia. He was there until retiring as deputy director of the IMA Directorate.

He took an early retirement to become a missionary in the Church of the Nazarene to Nairobi, Kenya to assist in opening a new university.

After returning from Kenya, he taught at MNU and worked giving computer lessons to elderly students in Olathe, Kansas. When he and his wife retired to Vermontville he taught a statistics course at Paul Smith’s College and wrote a column, “Ville and Dale,” for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

He was predeceased by Martha Tyler John.

Services are tentatively planned for July 30 at the Nazarene Church in Vermontville.